Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/189

178 carnage, as men armed strong with the weight of tyranny and law pressed down on men who fought for liberty, for conscience, for their land, and for their lives. She thought only of the dead who lay around her.

Two officers of the guard, obedient, stooped and laid their grasp upon her; the action roused her from the unconscious stupor with which she knelt beside the lifeless limbs; she shook them off and rose facing them, still with that look of terrible remorse in her tearless eyes, though on her face were a scorn and a daring which held those whom she threw off at bay as sorely as the most desperate resistance of shot or steel.

She glanced down the hall, under the dome of the light-studded ceiling that stretched over so vast an area, that had been a few brief moments before filled with music and mirth and the murmur of laughing voices. She took no heed of those who had sought to seize her, but her eyes gazed with an infinite yearning out on her defenders holding that unequal life-and-death struggle between the closing bayonets, and her voice echoed, clear and eloquent, yet with a misery that thrilled the hearts even of her enemies.

"My friends—my friends!—lose no more for me.